Mr. Fox, one of the most celebrated of English orators, was the second
son of the first Lord Holland, and was born in 1749. His father, though
a man of dissolute habits, was an influential member of Parliament,
indeed for many years was regarded as the most formidable opponent of
the elder Pitt in the House of Commons. The elder Fox received, as
a mark of royal favor, the most lucrative office in the gift of the
Government, that of Paymaster of the Forces; and he administered the
duties of this position so much to the satisfaction of the king, that
he was soon advanced to the peerage. His great wealth and his marriage
with Lady Georgiana Lennox, a very accomplished daughter of the Duke
of Richmond, made Holland House what it continued to be for three
generations, the favorite resort of whatever of culture and fashion
allied itself to the cause of its own political party.
It was in the atmosphere of this society that the lot of young Fox
was cast. The eldest son was afflicted with a nervous disease which
impaired his faculties, and consequently all the hopes of the house
were concentrated upon Charles. The father’s ambition for his son
was twofold: He desired that his boy should become at once a great
orator and a leader in the fashionable and dissolute society of the
day. In the one interest he furnished him with the most helpful and
inspiring instruction; in the other he personally introduced him to
the most famous gambling-houses in England and on the continent. The
boy profited by this instruction. He made extraordinary progress. His
biographer tells us that before he was sixteen he was so thoroughly
acquainted with Greek and Latin, that he read them as he read English,
and took up Demosthenes and Cicero as he took up Chatham and Burke. The
father paid his gambling bills with as much cheerfulness as he heard
him recite an ode of Horace or the funeral oration of Pericles. At the
university the young scholar furnished his mind with abundant stores
of literature and history, but he paid no attention to those great
economic questions which, under the influence of Adam Smith were then
beginning to play so large a part in national affairs. Even late in
life he confessed that he had never read the “Wealth of Nations.”
Leaving Oxford at seventeen, Fox went to the continent, where the
prodigal liberality of his father encouraged him in a life of unbounded
indulgence. He not only lost enormous sums of ready money, but his
father was obliged to pay debts amounting to a hundred thousand pounds.
To distract the boy’s attention from further excesses, Lord Holland
resolved to put him into the House of Commons. The system of pocket
boroughs made the opportunity easy; and, as no troublesome questions
were asked, the young profligate took his seat in May of 1768, a year
and eight months before he arrived at the eligible age.
By education and early political alliance Fox was a Tory, and it is
not singular therefore that the Government of Lord North hastened to
avail itself of his talents. In 1770 he was made a Junior Lord of
the Admiralty, and a little later found a seat on the bench of the
Treasury. But his wayward spirit would not brook control. He even went
so far as to take the floor in opposition to the Prime-Minister. This
violation of party discipline brought its natural result, and in 1774
Fox was contemptuously dismissed.
The blow was deserved, and was even needed for the saving of Fox
himself. His excesses in London and on the continent had become so
notorious that the public were fast coming to regard him simply as
a reckless gambler, whose favor and whose opposition were alike of
no importance. It was this contempt on the part of the ministry and
the public which stung him into something like reform. Though he did
not entirely abandon his old methods, he devoted himself to his work
in the House with extraordinary energy. All his ambition was now
directed to becoming a powerful debater. He afterward remarked that
he had literally gained his skill “at the expense of the House,” for
he had sometimes tasked himself to speak on every question that came
up, whether he was interested in it or not, and even whether he knew
any thing about it or not. The result was that in certain important
qualities of a public speaker, he excelled all other men of his time.
Burke even said of him, that “by slow degrees he rose to be the most
brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw.”
While this process of rising “by slow degrees” was going on, Fox was
also acquiring fixed ideas in regard to governmental affairs. The
contemptuous dismissal of Lord North probably stimulated his natural
inclinations to go into the opposition. As the American question was
gradually developed, Fox found himself in warm sympathy with the
colonial cause. He denied the right of the mother country to inflict
taxation, and was the first to denounce the policy of the Government
in the House of Commons. He enjoyed the friendship of the ablest men
among the Whigs, and he resorted to them, especially to Burke, for
every kind of political knowledge. Indeed, his obligations to that
great political philosopher were such, that in 1791, at the time of
their alienation on the question of England’s attitude toward the
French Revolution, he declared in the House that “if he were to put
all the political information which he had learned from books, all
he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world
and its affairs had taught him, into one scale, and the improvement
which he had derived from his right honorable friend’s instruction and
conversation in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to
give the preference.” Under this influence all his aspirations came to
be devoted, as he once said “to widen the basis of freedom,—to infuse
and circulate the spirit of liberty.” This subject it was that in one
form or another drew forth the most inspiring strains of his eloquence.
Fox’s political morality is not without one very dark stain. For
some years he had been the leader of the opposition to Lord North’s
administration. Under his repeated and powerful blows the great Tory
ministry was obliged to give way. Fox had been so conspicuously at the
head of the opposition that everybody looked to see him elevated to the
position of First Minister. But the king had been scandalized by the
irregularities of Fox’s life, and probably was quite willing to find an
excuse for not calling so able a Whig into power. Lord Shelburne was
appointed instead, and Fox refused to take office under him. But that
was not all. He not only refused to support Shelburne, but within six
months even formed a coalition against him with Lord North. Cooke, in
his “History of Party,” characterizes his action as “a precedent which
strikes at the foundation of political morality, and as a weapon in
the hands of those who would destroy all confidence in the honesty of
public men.” This characterization is not too severe; for the ability
and the lofty integrity of Lord Shelburne were such as to forbid us to
suppose that Fox’s action was the result of any other motive than that
of personal pique and disappointment. He carried his ardent followers
with him; and so shocked were the thinking men of the time, that there
was a general outcry either of regret or of indignation.
Lord Shelburne was of course defeated, and the Coalition ministry,
which it was afterward the great work of Pitt to break, came into
power. The popular sentiment was shown in the fact that, in the first
election that followed, a hundred and sixty of Fox’s friends lost their
seats in the House, and became, in the language of the day, “Fox’s
Martyrs.”
The views of Fox in regard to the French Revolution were so opposed to
those of Burke, that in 1791 their intimacy and even their friendship
were broken violently asunder. Of that memorable and painful incident
it is not necessary here to speak, other than to say that both of the
orators were wrong and both of them were right. Time has shown that
the evils predicted by Burke as the result of the Revolution were
scarcely an exaggeration of what actually followed; but it has also
shown that Fox was right in continually maintaining that nations,
however wrong may be their principles and methods, should be left to
conduct their internal affairs in their own way. It was this position
of Fox that led him to oppose the general attitude of England in regard
to the course of Napoleon. In the House of Commons he was always
listened to with pleasure; but his habits were such as to prevent his
gaining that confidence of the public which otherwise he might easily
have enjoyed.